We performed a comparison between NetApp AFF and VAST Data based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Pure Storage and others in All-Flash Storage."The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"The latency is good."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"I like the ability to snapshot, and the cloning features are valuable to us as well. I like that I can quickly and efficiently snapshot the data and move it to wherever I need to locally or in the cloud. Also, I know that when I take the snapshot that all of the data will be there and that it will be usable when I need to use it."
"Snapshots, snap clones, backups, flexibility, and agility are valuable features. I like that NetApp AFF is easy to use. We can automate everything for our backups and use cases. It's fast and simple, and provides storage to all of our VMware ESX hosts. It expands easily as well."
"Efficient and easily scalable all-flash storage solution, significantly reducing latency, optimizing data management, and providing cost savings for businesses"
"We do a lot of financial modeling. We have a large compute cluster that generates a lot of files. It is important for us to get a quick response back for any type of multimillion file accesses across the cluster at one time. So, it's a lot quicker to do that. We found that solid-state performs so much better than than spinning drives, even over multiple clusters."
"Speed, reliability, ease of use are the most valuable features."
"It is easy to manage data through the GUI by using Active IQ and the unified manager."
"Before we implemented AFF, Oracle was running on a traditional storage spindle and at a very low speed with high latency, and the database was not running very well. After we converted from the spinning disk to the all-flash array, it was at least four times faster to access the volume than before."
"Organizations can reduce data storage footprint and lower power and cooling costs, helping to adopt "Green IT.""
"This has been one of the most reliable storage systems that I have ever used."
"The solution is useful for machine learning and scientific applications, including computer simulations."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"The software layer has to improve."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"Another issue is that for smaller customers, NetApp doesn't have enough disk sizes. You begin with a 980-gigabyte disk and the next size is 3.8 terabytes. There aren't any disk sizes in between. Competitors have more choices in disk sizes."
"Customer service is one area of the product line where I would love to see improvement. I have had several vendor experiences with NetApp where I faced challenges in the initial call trying to navigate the requirements of the service level expectation. Their response could be better improved. However, the final result is great. It is just the initial support level where improvement would help to effectively solve problems."
"It has not reduced our data center costs. NetApp charges a pretty penny for their stuff."
"You have a limit in terms of how much you can expand storage. It sounds like a lot. However, over the years, as you grow, it may be smaller than you think."
"This solution should be made easier to deploy."
"I think for us, improvement would probably be the changes in how the flash is actually used inside the system and how we manage the actual disk and stripes within the system."
"Tech support is a place where there is room to improve the product experience. The response time when they are busy is not very good."
"The SRA stuff that intergrades with SRM is a problem point. It's a pain point. The support personnel aren't always knowledgeable on that product. At times, they are not even aware what product is supported and what is not, when one has been deprecated and there is a new one out, and what the bug fixes of the newer version are."
"The read/write ratio is an area in the solution with some flaws and needs improvement."
"The write performance could be improved because it is less than half of the read performance."
NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews while VAST Data is ranked 18th in All-Flash Storage with 2 reviews. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while VAST Data is rated 10.0. The top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VAST Data writes "Stability-wise, a device that has been up and running for years". NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray and NetApp ASA, whereas VAST Data is most compared with Pure Storage FlashBlade, Pure Storage FlashArray, Qumulo, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and DDN SFA7990X.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors and best NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays vendors.
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